Cages!

Well, you may have noticed that I have the opposite problem this week.  So much has been happening that I haven’t had time to post a blog entry for 10 days! 

First, since Anne’s been feeling better, we spent the last week drilling holes and installing cages for my pearl oyster survival, growth, and predation experiment.  We’re almost done and will deploy the actual pearl oysters today.  It wasn’t super exciting, but we did see a shark and a turtle while we were doing it.  We’re very excited to finally start the experiment!!!

Second, the Hi’ialakai was here Friday to Sunday, which made for some fun evenings including a bonfire their final night.  They had 50 crew members and scientists who were working on coral reef research of a variety of types – coral & fish disease, acoustic (sound) monitoring, etc. 

Sunday, Pete the refuge biologist offered to drive the boat for a fun snorkeling trip.  We ended up heading to our coring and reef growth location on the SE side of the atoll, which hosts a great diversity of corals and fishes as well as high coral cover.  Pete was very impressed, took lots of photos, and wanted the GPS point in order to return!  He posted several amazing photos from our snorkel trip on his blog on Sunday: http://peteatmidway.blogspot.com.   I was able to check our coring sites on the reef crest and make sure that our concrete fill worked.  Construction worker Derek and I also picked up several small marine debris nets.

Also, here's an interesting article from the National Wildlife Federation on what it was like to experience the tsunami and its aftermath at Midway: http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazines/national-wildlife/birds/archives/2011/seabird-rescue-midway.aspx